Her Pretty Face Read online

  “I’m not so sure,” Kate said, through a two-hundred-calorie mouthful of cake and chocolate. “He drank all the orange juice this morning. I thought Daisy was going to stab him with her butter knife.”

  Frances laughed and realized she was enjoying herself. It was all due to Kate’s presence. The two women shared a sense of humor and a disdain for Forrester’s snobby, cliquey, yummy-mummies. With statuesque, self-assured Kate in her corner, Frances felt more confident, less vulnerable to attack. Their friendship was still in its adolescence, but Kate had already earned Frances’s devotion.

  Kate set her fondue fork down. “Where do I get some wine? Daisy’s charging me twelve bucks an hour. I’ve got to make the most of this night.”

  “I’ll show you to the bar,” Frances said. Together, they picked their way through the crowd.

  daisy

  NOW

  Daisy was high. About twenty minutes ago, she and Liam had perched on her mom’s Pottery Barn patio sectional and sucked marijuana smoke from Liam’s intricate glass bong. They had exhaled into the crisp autumn night, the pungent fumes mixing with the steam from their warm breath, and giggled about getting a passing squirrel stoned—like it wasn’t paranoid enough already. Now they were inside, on the cream-colored sofa, Daisy’s legs thrown over Liam’s lap as they kissed.

  Daisy was undeniably lit. Her brain was dumb and foggy, but all her senses were heightened. She could feel everything: Liam’s hot tongue darting between her teeth like a pleasant electric current; his taut, muscular thighs beneath hers; the growing tingling in her belly and groin. Every molecule in her body was alive, vibrating with sexual energy. She wanted to get closer to Liam, to meld into him and disappear. She was ready for something more meaningful, more intimate. . . .

  Abruptly, Liam pulled his lips from hers. “What was that?” He cocked his head, listening.

  “I didn’t hear anything.” Her mouth searched for his again, but he turned his face away.

  “I think it’s your parents.” He unceremoniously dumped her legs from his lap and jumped to his feet.

  “You’re paranoid,” Daisy said, watching him stuff his bong into his backpack, his eyes darting to the front door. “You’re like that squirrel.”

  Liam allowed a small smirk and Daisy reached for his hand. “They won’t be home for hours,” she said, pulling him back down to the pale sofa. “I promise.”

  Her words seemed to assuage him, because he let her kiss him again. She could feel his body responding to her, hear his breath getting faster and heavier. Daisy threw a leg over both of his and straddled him. She lowered herself onto him and felt how much he wanted this, too. Shifting slightly, she reached for his zipper.

  “Stop.” He grabbed her hips and tossed her off him.

  “No one’s here, Liam.”

  He looked at her then; his face—adorable in its adolescent transition from cute to handsome—was red . . . very, very red. “I don’t think . . . I mean, it’s just . . . I just . . .”

  Unbidden, an image of Liam’s face on a squirrel’s body—nervous, worried, racing around the backyard in a fit of paranoia—appeared in Daisy’s drug-addled mind. A bubble of uncontrolled laughter burst through her lips. Fuck. She was so stoned.

  But the junior quarterback wasn’t laughing. He was leaving. Liam snatched up his backpack and marched toward the door. Daisy’s laughter stopped abruptly. “Where are you going?”

  “Home,” he muttered, already stepping into his shoes.

  Daisy hurried over to the entryway. “I’m sorry. . . . I wasn’t laughing at you. I’m just high.”

  “Whatever.”

  She grabbed his forearm with both her hands. “What’s wrong, Liam?”

  His cheeks blushed a deeper red as he struggled to get the words out. “This is just . . . moving too fast.”

  His words stunned her. Weren’t teenage boys supposed to be obsessed with sex? Desperate to get laid? Trust Daisy to find the one guy who was too uptight, or too immature . . . or too gay, maybe?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, gently. “I thought you wanted me to touch you. I thought you liked it.”

  “I didn’t. And I don’t.”

  “It felt like you liked it to me.”

  “We’re fourteen.”

  “Uh . . . yeah?”

  “Your parents could come home any second! Your brother is asleep upstairs!”

  “So . . . ?”

  Liam’s eyes, glassy but intense, bored into hers. “What is wrong with you, Daisy?” His words weren’t angry or cruel, they were merely . . . curious.

  Suddenly, Daisy felt completely lucid, the pleasant fog of her high dissipating, leaving her painfully clearheaded. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, because there were no words. Liam had pegged her: there was something very wrong with her.

  Without another sound, her would-be lover yanked open the door and left. Daisy followed him onto the front steps, watched him sprint down the drive, onto the quiet street, and into the night. He was running away from her, like she was a teenage praying mantis who would devour him once sexually satisfied. Her breath visible in the cool dark air, she stayed there, watching his diminishing form. Liam was still running, fast, his football conditioning serving him well. Finally, when the boy was no more than a bouncing speck, Daisy closed the door and went back inside.

  The house suddenly felt emptier. Well, it was emptier. But it felt large and vacuous, the pale color palette her mom had chosen for their new home cold and sterile. The rooms were pristine as always: her mother was a clean freak. She vacuumed and dusted daily, cleaned blinds and scrubbed floors on Wednesdays and Saturdays, bathrooms on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. “I just like things tidy,” her mom would say, but it was textbook OCD. The woman had issues, as evidenced by the numerous prescription pill bottles she kept hidden in her bathroom vanity. They were all for anxiety. Daisy dipped into them on occasion, when she wanted to numb herself, but they made her lazy and sleepy.

  Daisy stood at the large picture window that looked out onto the backyard, and stared into the thick darkness. The home was situated on a quiet street, the backyard bordered by a copse of evergreens. Through the heavy branches, she could just make out the twinkling lights of the homes perched on the hillside surrounding the still, dark waters of Lake Washington. It was a stunning view, but the beauty was lost on Daisy in her current state. The rejection stung. She had wanted to be with Liam tonight, had wanted to get close to him, to take things further—maybe, possibly, even all the way. She’d offered him her virginity, and he’d thrown it back in her face like . . . tickets to a Nickelback concert. It wasn’t because she wasn’t pretty: her reflection in the blackened glass confirmed that. She’d inherited her mom’s lithe frame, her lustrous hair and light gray eyes, and her dad’s olive complexion. The combination was striking; she was used to double takes when she walked past, from boys, men, even women. Unlike her peers, Daisy wasn’t obsessed with her looks. She didn’t even have Instagram, which made her a ninth-grade anomaly. Her appearance was a genetic gift from her parents—but the strong resemblance to her mother muddied her gratitude.

  Pulling herself away from the window, she wandered through the frigid rooms. Her parents rarely went out. Kate and Robert were “homebodies,” they said. More like recluses. Her mom was a housewife and her dad was a consultant, something to do with law. He’d been an attorney, years ago, but now he worked from home, his office tucked between the master bedroom and her brother’s room. (Daisy’s room was across the hall—way too close to the rest of her family.) Because they moved so often, her mom and dad barely had a social life, so when Daisy got a bit of space, some privacy, she wanted to make the most of it. She’d had big plans for tonight, but Liam had ruined them.

  She found her phone on the sofa and checked the time: 10:25 p.m. Perhaps the night could still be salvaged? She had friends, of course she did. Girls who looked like Daisy were instantly popular, no matter the defects in their personality. But Da
isy knew none of her pals would be “allowed” out at this hour of the night. The sheer terror in which her cohort held its parents confounded her. They were always afraid of being “caught,” like they were defenseless fish and their parents were going to bonk them on the head and fry them up for dinner. Daisy didn’t crave her elders’ approval, didn’t live in fear of disappointing them. In fact, her parents’ opinion of her was largely irrelevant. Maybe this was because her mother had stopped loving her?

  It wasn’t abrupt, angry, or violent; it was a gradual detachment that started when Daisy was about twelve. Her mother had loved her when she was little, or at least she’d played the part of a loving mom. There had been hugs, cuddles, bedtime stories, and lullabies. But once Daisy reached double digits, she felt her mom cooling toward her. Kate hadn’t abandoned her maternal role entirely: she still cooked Daisy’s dinner, did her laundry if she put it in the basket, and gave her money for new running shoes or a raincoat, but her indifference was undeniable. Her dad’s apathy was less noticeable, perhaps because he’d been less hands-on to begin with. Robert loved both his children, in his reserved, distracted way. But Kate only loved Charles.

  At first, Daisy had thought it was a normal part of growing up, this growing apart. But when she saw her friends interacting with their maternal figures, she realized that what was going on between her and her mom was far from typical. When she observed her mom cuddling her brother, sharing a joke with him, helping him with his homework, she knew the distance between her and Kate wasn’t natural. She had felt twinges of envy initially, but she pushed them away, calcified herself to the jealousy. And eventually, the benign neglect ceased to bother her. In fact, she felt freed by it. It gave her more room to explore life, to find her path, to become her own person. The only effect was a deep resentment toward her annoying eleven-year-old brother. At least she was normal in that respect.

  A surge of claustrophobia suddenly gripped her; she needed to get out of the house, she needed air. She didn’t feel stoned anymore, she felt itchy and agitated: confined. Silently, she padded across the gleaming hardwood floors to the carpeted staircase and crept up it. When she reached her brother’s door, she opened it a crack and peered inside. As predicted, the boy was sleeping soundly—the sleep of the innocent, the carefree, the protected. His room was spotless (their mom still cleaned it for him like he was four, not eleven), and a bastion of adolescent masculinity: baseball gear, soccer cleats, a hockey stick and helmet. . . . Charles was destined to grow up to be a douchey jock, Daisy knew it.

  Closing the door, she scampered back down the stairs to the front entryway. She stepped into her shoes, grabbed the house keys, and slipped into the cold night. She locked the door behind her—just in case. But nothing bad happened around here. Nothing dangerous, or dramatic, or even remotely exciting. She’d only be gone for fifteen, twenty minutes tops. Charles would be fine.

  The autumn air was cool and crisp, and yet, somehow, still damp and cloying. Everything in Bellevue, the upscale suburb just northeast of Seattle, felt clammy to Daisy after the dry, brittle atmosphere of Billings, Montana. Toast was not as crunchy. Crackers had a slightly stale, leaden texture. When Daisy showered in the mornings, her towel remained moist, even twenty-four hours later, musty and smelly. Her hair was wavy now, bouncy and difficult to manage. Daisy had been happy in Billings; she’d thought they were all happy in Billings. And then, abruptly, her parents had announced the move.

  Daisy didn’t know what had precipitated their relocation this time, but every two to five years, her parents felt the need to uproot their children and resettle in another pocket of the country. Daisy had been born in New Hampshire. They’d stayed until she was two, and then they’d moved to Topeka, Kansas, where Charles was born. Since then, they’d lived in the Florida Keys (a cottagey house in Islamorada infested with enormous cockroaches); Moorhead, Minnesota (snow, lots of snow); and Billings (crisp toast and stick-straight hair). “It’s for my work,” her dad said vaguely, like he’d never heard of conference calls or telecommuting. Were her parents really that restless? That rootless?

  In Minnesota, Daisy had let herself become attached to a girl named Beatrice. When the Randolphs inevitably left, the division was torturous. She wouldn’t go through that again. Her walls were up now, her relationships arm’s-length. And she’d discovered a certain liberty in her transient lifestyle. With an out on the horizon, she was free to focus on her short game. Unlike her peers, Daisy didn’t have to worry about long-term consequences, didn’t have to protect her reputation at all costs. She could fool around with Liam if she wanted to. . . . Well, if he had wanted to.

  It was still early for a Friday night, but most of the houses lining the paved street were silent and dark, evidence of the sleepiness of the neighborhood her parents had chosen. All their communities, while geographically diverse, had this in common. They were quiet, suburban, boring. Clyde Hill was a blend of the super-rich (tech workers with high salaries and stock options) and the semi-rich (tech contractors with decent salaries and no stock options). The homes were a mixture of neo-Mediterranean, neocolonial, and modern mansions interspersed with more modest homes, ranches and split-levels, a handful of bungalows. (Daisy didn’t know the architectural terms; she labeled them mansions, big houses, and shacks.) Even the small homes had luxury cars nestled in their attached garages (sports cars for commuting to Amazon or Expedia or the Microsoft campus; massive SUVs for shuttling the kids to school and soccer practice). Virtually every residence had an aggressively green, professionally landscaped yard.

  A car was rumbling toward her—an older model, something big and muscular and American. Daisy didn’t know much about cars, but she knew this gangster model was out of place in their conservative suburb. As the vehicle approached, it slowed to a crawl, its headlights shining directly into Daisy’s face. She stepped onto the grassy shoulder to let it pass, but, with a squeak of its brakes, the car stopped, about twenty feet from her.

  Daisy raised a hand to her brow to block the glare. The headlights were blinding, the beams making her eyes sting. She stood, waiting for the car to move along, but it didn’t. It idled there, the big engine purring like a mountain lion. Squinting into the light, she tried to make out the car’s occupants, but it was too far away, like the driver had known precisely where to pause to conceal his identity. Daisy strained her neck forward, focused her eyes in the glare, but all she could make out were two hands on the steering wheel . . . large, blunt, masculine hands.

  Her heart was beating fast—a normal fight-or-flight response—but she wasn’t afraid, not really. Objectively, she knew she was vulnerable. Those hands could belong to a serial killer, a gang rapist, the head of a sex slavery ring. Alternatively, the driver could be a nosy neighbor who would call her mom and dad, alert them that their fourteen-year-old daughter was roaming the streets at night, mildly stoned, leaving her adolescent brother home alone. But it was more likely that the vehicle contained a suburban nobody, driving home from a boring dinner party or a dumb movie. A mild sense of curiosity had caused him to pull over, nothing more.

  “What?” she snapped at the humming machine, dropping her hand from her eyes and glaring at the impervious windshield. “What do you want?”

  The car just sat there, idling, its occupant watching her. The hands remained motionless—at ten and two—their grip solid but relaxed. For just a moment, Daisy’s teen invincibility faltered, her signature brand of indifference wavered. The hair on her arms stood up and a tiny frisson ran through her—not fear, exactly, but the creeps.

  “What the fuck?” she yelled, raising her arms in what she hoped was a menacing manner. “What’s your fuckin’ problem?”

  The windows remained sealed; the engine continued to grumble. The car stared her down, a metallic lion, an automated grizzly.

  Daisy bent down and plucked a rock from the shoulder of the road. It was about the size of an egg, but rough and jagged. “Fuck off!” she screamed, arm cocked, ready to fire.
“Quit staring at me, you pervert!”

  Nothing.

  She ran forward, about five feet, and threw the rock—not as hard as she could (she didn’t want to shatter the windshield, though she may have been overestimating her own strength), but hard enough. It hit the hood of the car with a thud, then rolled off the sloping surface, back to the pavement. It was too dark to see if the assault had done any damage, but the sound was indicative of some decent scratches.

  As the rock landed on the road, the car’s gears audibly shifted and its engine roared to life. The car took off, speeding past her with a gust of heat and exhaust.

  Daisy watched the red taillights receding. “Fucking weirdo,” she muttered in its wake. When the car had disappeared, she prepared to continue her stroll, but found herself stuck, motionless, on the shoulder. She still had time to spare before her parents would arrive home, but she didn’t want to venture farther. To her surprise, the encounter had unnerved her. It had been benign, really, but there had been something ominous and thrilling about the standoff. As she walked back toward home, Daisy felt strangely clear and alert.

  For the first time since they’d arrived in Bellevue, Washington, she felt alive.

  dj

  THEN

  DJ’s sister had been missing for eleven days. Courtney had taken off after a fight with their parents, and hadn’t been seen since. “She just needs to cool off,” his dad had said, when she didn’t return the first night. “She’s playing with us” he said, the second night, “she wants us to worry.” On the third night, his mom called the police.

  They were looking for her now: the police, their dogs, their helicopters. The community had organized search parties, had plastered the town with MISSING posters. Still, nothing. His parents were frightened and frantic and blaming each other. It was late, and DJ should have been asleep, but instead he was lying in his bed, the acrylic comforter pulled up to his chin, listening to them fight.